Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Lens Magazine

WHETHER I’M WORKING IN NORTH KOREA, IRAN, IRAQ, OR OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE INTERNATIONAL SPOTLIGHT, MY FOCUS TENDS TO BE THE SAME: PEOPLE GOING ABOUT THEIR DAILY LIVES AS BEST THEY CAN. YET, AT THE SAME TIME, I USE MY CAMERA TO PHOTOGRAPH ANIMALS THAT FACE HUMANCAUSED ISSUES, SUCH AS PALM OIL PLANTATION INCURSIONS INTO THE FORESTS OF BORNEO AND MOVING ORANGUTANS TO THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION IN THE WILD. Animals becoming the victims of human conflict is also nothing new. Photos of dead horses strewn across countless 19th-century and early 20th-century battlefields can attest to this sad reality. In Ukraine, there’s been a migration from east to west, not only of people but every size and shape of fauna. Some are pets brought out by their fleeing owners. Others…

In 2016 I passed through Verdun, France, to have a look at the battlefields of the First World War. That year, preparations were made to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of that war. A few months before, they had just celebrated Freedom Day in The Netherlands, which refers to the liberation from Nazi Germany. While looking at the bomb craters surrounding the city of Verdun, it struck me that despite all these celebrations, the idea that we live in peace is an illusion. The bombs are falling somewhere else, far away, out of sight, the fighting has shapeshifted into economic forms with the exploitation of people in poorer countries, and the planet is burning up with natural resources becoming ever scarcer and many living species dying out. I…

‘ARCHITECTURAL MANDALAS’ IS A SERIES INSPIRED BY THE TRADITIONAL MANDALAS’ GEOMETRIC CONFIGURATIONS. THE IMAGES HAVE - AS A STARING POINT - AN ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL FROM COMMISSIONED PROJECTS WHICH ARE THEN DECONSTRUCTED AND MANIPULATED TO REACH MESMERIZING GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTIONS. In spiritual traditions, mandalas have been used as a guiding tool for focusing attention to aid meditation or for establishing a sacred space in an induced trance. In Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, cosmic symbols and sacred geometry are layered upon each other to represent maps of a spiritual journey and the archetypal relationship between the outer world (macrocosm) and man’s inner world (microcosm). As such, they are visualizations of the inner-outer synthesis of human consciousness. Contemporary architecture broke free from the constraints of Euclidean geometry and disassociated itself from the…

THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE FOR CONTEMPORARY FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY Available for subscriptions and single Issues on the Apple Store Newsstand, Google Play, Magzter.com, Pocketmags.com, Zinio.com and Pressreader.com. Full distribution to the archive data of Universities, Academic Libraries & Public Libraries around the world by EBSCO Information service. The content is available for academic researchers, lecturers at the universities, and as a material for teaching students around the globe. Distribution at airports, train stations, hotels in the US and Europe. Available in a Kindle version on amazon.com. Print Edition By MagCloud.com Thank You! Thank you for joining us on this long 100 magazines journey and letting us be part of yours! You are our inspiration!…

“I LIKE TO THINK OF PHOTOGRAPHY AS A DOOR INTO AN ETERNAL LIFE THAT APPEARS TO BE AVAILABLE FOR EVERYONE. ONE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE ALL-TIME GOOD AND SINLESS. ALL THERE IS TO DO IS TO BE IN A PHOTO. AND THEN, LUCKY DEVIL, YOU GET CLOSER TO IMMORTALITY.” Memories are cherished as long as human beings exist. It all started with rock art presented by cave paintings (the most ancient one - Altamira in northern Spain was made about 36,000 and 15,000 years ago). It depicted daily routine, human activities, first tools, and animals. The very first portraits were made approximately 5000 years ago in Egypt. However, the painting technique was not the only way artists could make portraits. Sculpture, drawings, and mosaics are considered the most ancient art…

Pratima Gurung knows ten people who left her village to work overseas. Today, the young are no longer happy living traditional lifestyles; instead, they dream of the success the modern world promises. In Nepal’s rural villages, only a few people remain. What were once thriving, autonomous villages 30 years ago are now filled with abandoned houses and uncultivated fields. The traditions that helped these communities survive and flourish for centuries are at risk of vanishing, taking with them the vast archive of knowledge, expertise, and imagination that make up the complexity and diversity of their culture. Until the end of the 18th century, stateless people (autonomous, self-governed) occupied most of the world’s landmass — forests, steppes, deserts, mountains, and other remote areas. With the advent of the industrial revolution, state…

The Lesotho Kingdom is an enclaved country in southern Africa and the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 meters (3,281 ft) in elevation. Its lowest point of 1,400 meters (4,593 ft) is thus the highest in the world. Over 80 percent of the country lies above 1,800 meters (5,906 ft). The Basotho are a Bantu ethnic group whose ancestors have lived in southern Africa since around the fifth century. The Basotho nation emerged from the accomplished diplomacy of Moshoeshoe I, who gathered together disparate Sotho– Tswana origin clans that had dispersed across southern Africa in the early 19th century. Most Basotho today live in South Africa, as the area of the Orange Free State was originally part of Moshoeshoe’s nation (now Lesotho). Beautiful, culturally rich,…

I USE THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE MY IMAGES: COLOR, CONTRAST, AND MOTION. Color, contrast, and motion describe emergency scenes full of contrasting colored vehicles with bright and flashing lights. The scenes are often full of action as responders assess the scope of the situation and resolve the emergencies presented to them. Night shoots are some of my favorites as I work to capture images with available light. The response vehicles' strobes also provide colorful accents, especially with helicopters. Shooting on the scene is a constant adjustment as lighting conditions change or as I adjust to capture different images for documentation or artistic purposes. I will often try to capture both at the same time with quick setting adjustments before moving on to the next shoot. The key is to capture…

A SPECIAL INTERVIEW BY JOSÉ JEULAND AT THE LEICA’S CELEBRATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION, SINGAPORE “I HOPE YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS DO BETTER AND TAKE PHOTOS OF IMPORTANT SUBJECTS! MANY OF THEM (THE YOUNG GENERATION) ARE VERY SMART AND WORK HARD. THEY’LL ALSO NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SHOOT VIDEOS WELL. OUR INDUSTRY HAS CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY IN THE PAST 40 YEARS, AND THINGS ARE MUCH FASTER AND MORE CONVENIENT NOW.”-NICK UT When I was just starting out in my photography journey, I was already familiar with Nick Ut’s work—"The Terror of War," a jarring picture depicting several children fleeing from a napalm bombing in the Vietnam war. In fact, many people who are not in the photography industry are familiar with this picture due to its sheer historical impact. After all, the picture…

Indigenous to the Nile Valley, the Mundari is a small ethnic group of roughly 100,000 (very tall) people. As is the case for many other tribes in the area, everything is about the cows for the Mundari. Cattle are their primary source of wealth; the cows serve as a form of currency (these days, an attractive bride can "cost" as much as 100 cows) and, as such, have become a symbol of status and power. The Mundari are semi-nomadic people. Women, children, and the elderly stay in a permanent village while the men and boys accompany the cattle in a search for grazing. To do so, they live in a temporary camp where they can keep a close eye on their "property." The activities in a cattle camp are quite…

“Now I see photography as a way to know different parts of me and explore my body. It helps me get in touch with a deeper level of self-love and self-worth.”- MIKA MORET Photography helped me to be kinder to myself – I am now grateful for my body and what it allows me to do. Photography has been a part of my life since my early adolescence. I grew up in a big city in Brazil and always had a sense of longing for my place in this world. My love for photography started when my father bought me a small digital camera, and I loved spending whole afternoons exploring my surroundings with it - and how I could experience the world around me from a completely new perspective.…